Analyzing the previous academic research on DotA 2 win prediction, a number of limitations can be identified: 1) Professional games: Previous work has not analyzed professional games apart from a small analysis of in-game combat by [1]}. Pro game prediction has the highest interest in the esports community.
2) Skill rank comparison: Previous work does not analyze both pro games and non-pro games, or compare pro games to extremely high skill non-pro matches, despite [2]} drachen2014skillbased documenting the differences in spatio-temporal behavior of players across skill levels. DotA 2 matches are played across a diverse range of rankings. 3) Metagame: Previous work has collected match data over time periods that crossed significant changes to the game when new game patches were released, meaning prediction models risk being affected by these changes. These patches alter the “meta-game” (the high level strategies adopted by players and teams beyond the standard rule of the game).
